Irony
by Marc Vun Kannon
Summary: Steve Rogers returned the Infinity Stones, and got a life. This is how.
1. Future and Past

**A/N** I recently saw Avengers Endgame for the second time, and found myself wondering how the time travel parts of the story could be reconciled. It isn't immediately obvious. Could Cap have lived quietly with Agent Carter, knowing Hydra was slowly taking over SHIELD? Even if I could imagine the answer to that to be 'yes', there are other, more difficult problems to deal with. He doesn't get the mind gem until after stealing it from Hydra and battling his earlier self. Loki gets away with the tesseract. Returning the mind gem to the exact moment he got it won't undo either of those events, or their consequences.

Et cetera.

It took me a little while, and some help from my son (Hi, Jim!), to come up with the logic behind this story, and a little longer to get up the desire to write it. I write to discover the plot, so having it already there took away a large part of my motivation. If I'm lucky I'll trip over something I missed the first time around, but if not, I'll still have Captain America.

* * *

Irony. He was swimming in it.

He was Steve Rogers, Captain America, a man out of his own time, frozen in ice until he was thawed out just in time to see the woman he loved die. At least she didn't die alone. He'd left her to live alone, victim of a broken promise. Now he was the one going into the past, to keep another man's promise.

He'd crashed his plane (really a stolen Hydra plane) in order to keep the tesseract (really one of the six infinity gems, in what looked like a crystal cube) out of the hands of Hydra. Now he was going back to deliver another of the infinity stones into those very same hands.

Irony.

Natasha had died to save trillions, and now he was returning the stone so Thanos could get it and kill those same trillions. Wouldn't bring Nat back, though.

Irony. Time travel's just...full of it.

Fortunately there wasn't much time travel left in the universe. The travel part, yes, that would always be there, but the entry points, the navigation? Those were harder to come by, and more dangerous to use. Columbus sailing across an uncharted ocean with bad maps had been safer. When Thanos came through the big portal his ship destroyed it, and Thanos himself destroyed the little portal that Scott had been trapped in. Which left one, a one-man prototype in a remote lab (really Tony Stark's basement), which had been left untouched by the destruction of the Avengers' compound.

Now it was standing in the woods. By a lake. Which at least made more sense than building a time machine into a DeLorean. They'd been bitten by their own technology too often lately. Plus the Powers That Be had descended on the compound during the Avengers' moment of weakness, and no way were they going to let General Ross near an ultimate weapon. Either of them.

Bruce Banner handled the silver case with surprising delicacy for such large fingers. Five years of life as a smart Hulk had taught him control. "Remember," he said, opening the case to reveal the six gems inside. He'd had custody ever since the battle, with the least faith in Ross and no desire to ever use the stones. Again.

Now Banner was handing that responsibility to the one man in the universe he trusted not to be tempted to use the stones even the first time, and he was dotting each I, crossing each T. "You gotta return the stones to the exact moment you got them or you're gonna open up a whole lot of nasty alternative realities." Dr. Strange's boss, the Ancient One, had said so. It was Strange's plan that had saved the universe, and the Ancient One's faith in Strange that had led her to surrender the last gem. For Banner it was an article of what little faith he had left.

Steve had heard it all several times already, but he didn't say anything. The promise he was keeping was Banner's, given to the Ancient One in exchange for the stone. All those nasty alternative realities would be on Banner's head if he failed. Steve knew that Banner would prefer to be the one to return the gems, but with one arm crippled indefinitely he couldn't do it. Not to mention that he tended to stand out in a crowd, even more than Captain America did. "Don't worry, Bruce," said Steve with his usual firmness, if not more so. He shut the case and took custody, ready to do what he had to do. "Clip all the branches." No failures allowed.

Bruce didn't look worried. He didn't look happy, either, or confident. Just sad. "You know, I tried," he said, and Steve knew exactly what he'd tried. He'd have done the same. "When I had the gauntlet, the stones, I really tried to bring her back." He stared at the case, holding the only thing left of Natasha Romanoff. "I miss her, man."

They both did. They'd both loved Nat in their own ways, and neither of those loves had ever come to anything. She'd sacrificed them both a long time before she'd sacrificed herself to get the Soul Gem. Only Clint Barton could claim more, and he'd retired back to his farm with his family right after the funeral, first and fastest of all of them. For good, this time. Steve didn't expect to ever see him again. "Me, too." Really it was little enough to say, and who else could say it, and who else could he say it to? Thor had gone as well, out to make amends for his long years of self-pity, Also strangely reluctant to return to, or even think about, his past, leaving Steve and Bruce to handle the clean-up more or less on their own. To soldier on.

Steve was good at that. He walked to the waiting portal apparatus, remembering how they'd all walked to a much bigger one just days before, all together. Now that portal was destroyed, and only this prototype remained. When he was done it too would be destroyed. Clip all the branches. Clip even the possibility of branches.

Sam was there, of course. Sam was always there. The best wingman he'd ever had. "You know if you want, I could come with you." Sam had missed a lot of what had happened to him, to all of them, dusted backed in Wakanda. When they'd all come back, he'd been the first man through the portal they'd opened up to bring their armies against Thanos and his legions. The first man at Steve's back, like always, but he'd always regretted not being there those missing years.

Steve shook his head regretfully. "You're a good man, Sam. This one's on me, though." They had no suit built for Sam, and they were pretty snug fits.

Another reason not to take Sam waited just behind him. Bucky Barnes would have wanted to go with them, and this mission was already too big. Steve gave him the straight line. "Don't do anything stupid 'til I get back."

Bucky smiled, that old smile. The one he'd had before...all of this, and gave him the punchline. "How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you." Good old Bucky. The two men shared a hug, not something they'd grown up doing but they'd gotten used to it. Bucky stepped back and said, "Gonna miss you, buddy."

Steve took that in stride. Bucky always did know more than he let on. "It's gonna be okay, Buck."

Nothing more needed to be said after that, so Captain America said nothing, turning instead to step up onto the platform marking the base point for his time-travel GPS device. Pausing to activate the armor, he turned again to look at Banner for his cues, picking up Mjolnir casually. Vindicated and victorious in battle, Thor had been surprisingly relieved, when they all realized Steve could return the hammer for him. It fit his hand well, a worthy replacement for his shattered shield. He gave Banner a nod.

"How long is this gonna take?" asked Sam, nervously.

Banner, busy with the controls, missed it. "For him? As long as he needs. For us, five seconds." He scanned all the readouts, making sure all of his controls were properly synched with the onboard computer in Steve's suit. "Ready Cap? Alright, we'll meet you back here, okay?"

As if he could meet them anywhere else. "You bet."

Banner made himself busy, flipping the switches in the required sequence, one-handed. "Going quantum," he said loudly, unnecessarily. "Three, two, one."

Steve vanished from the platform.

* * *

**A/N 2** So I got lucky. A lot of other things occurred to me as I was writing, which is one of the things I like most about writing and the main reason I do it. When I was writing it I figured out for myself that Bucky probably knew Steve wasn't planning to come back. Later I saw others had similar ideas, and there may even be a deleted scene with that possibility mentioned. I haven't watched that disk, though, so I left my version the way it was.

This chapter is something of a prologue to the story I have in mind. The rest of these chapters will almost certainly be longer, and more original work on my part, which means they'll also take longer to produce. I can rewrite a story pretty quickly but creating it is a lot harder. I hope those of you who read this will let me know what you think.


	2. Power and Space

**A/N** On my own now. I will be basing the story on what was shown but extrapolating it from there. If there are any elements of the MCU that might impact the story please feel free to comment about them, or PM me. I saw Dr. Strange once, Black Panther half that, and never saw Captain Marvel. My son reminded me of something from Dr. Strange that will change the story a bit when we get to that part, which I was unaware of.

* * *

_"Remember."_

_"Clip all the branches."_

_"This one's on me."_

_"Three, two, one."_

* * *

First stop, New York.

Not Brooklyn. Not even Queens. The coordinates from Banner's trip into the past placed Steve on the roof of a brownstone in Manhattan. The radiance of the mind stone opening the portal speared the air, drew the eye. Chitauri warriors were fighting and dying uptown, but Tony Stark was doing his best to keep them contained, with the rest of the newly-christened Avengers doing their best to wipe them out.

Avenging. Phil Coulson, the first to die for the team, before it even was a team. Everybody loved Phil. If only they had pre-venged him, not of this would have happened, but they weren't the Pre-vengers, were they?

"Back so soon?" said a woman, amusement lacing her voice.

Steve turned, to see a bald person in robes, flinging power around, driving the few Chitauri in the area back uptown. "I must say, your technology is precise, I'll give it that much," she said, still with her back to him.

He retracted the helmet into its housing. "He didn't say you were a woman."

The Ancient One turned, lacking enemies to dispatch now. "You're not Banner."

"No, I'm not," said Steve, surprised that she was surprised. Banner made it sound like she knew everything. On the other hand, she was busy. "He was wounded using the stones, and couldn't come."

She looked concerned. "Wounded?"

"His arm," said Steve, holding up his right hand. "Only he could use the stones and survive. He brought everyone back."

"I won't ask where they went," she said, warning him off the topic. Her bright, perceptive eyes scanned him. "You're the frozen one."

Not his preferred legacy. "My name is Steve Rogers."

"I know," she said, not offering any name in response. She looked at the case in his hands. "Have you come to return what your friend borrowed from me, Captain Rogers?"

"I have." Steve put the case on a nearby table and opened it, lifting out a containment grid with the green stone held in it. "With proper gratitude for the loan." He held it out to her.

She held up her hands, and the stone lifted from the grid to float between her fingers without touching her flesh. Pulling her hands back she let the stone move into the metal casing of the Eye amulet. There she paused, frowning. She pulled the stone out of the shell. "I cannot accept."

Steve kept himself very still. How could she not want the stone? It was hers. They needed her help, too, and if she didn't take back her own stone maybe that wouldn't get that either. But a commander of men learned quickly how to keep doubts and surprises to himself. Bad for morale. "I don't understand."

She floated the gem back into the grid, releasing her spell. "What I feared has come to pass, as I thought it might when I gave the stone to Banner. You achieved your ends, clearly, but the universe is now unstable. You must fix it before I can accept this gem."

"What do you mean, 'unstable'?" All mission objectives had been achieved.

She pointed to the case. "Show me the gems, so that I may assess the damage."

She'd defeated Banner easily, but the gems were Steve's responsibility now. "I will, but if you try to touch, take, or use the stones in any way I will have to stop you."

She smiled. "You'll have to try. Do not fear, Captain Rogers. The Eye of Agamotto has passed from one Sorcerer Supreme to the next in unbroken succession for thousands of years. We have learned to control ourselves around its power."

Steve lifted the case, displaying the stones. He placed the green stone's grid back in its place.

She reached out a hand, above the case but not touching it. "Yes. I can feel them." She withdrew her hand.

"Feel them?" asked Steve, closing the case.

"Yes. The Reality gem and the Time gem are unhappy, but the Mind gem is virtually quivering."

"I don't understand," said Steve. He'd been the one to retrieve the Mind Gem. "My part of the mission went without a hitch, well except that I had to fight myself for the scepter, but I used the stone on the earlier me, he shouldn't remember a thing. I know I don't."

She looked at him curiously. "Why do you think that would matter?"

"Because that's what Banner said, that we can't change our own pasts."

"If only it were that easy." She sighed. "That's not how it works. Haven't you watched any of the movies?"

Steve shook his head. He'd been meaning to but somehow never found time.

"People are changing elements of the past all the time." She held up a hand and a line appeared in the air. A bright point moved along the line until it reached a midpoint and burst, making a sphere of light that spread along the line in both directions. "Haven't you ever had a moment where you felt you should do something that you don't end up doing, and later discover that you should have?"

"You're talking about hunches?" Steve had never really had one of those, but then he usually did what he thought he should do.

She nodded. "Those are the temporal echoes of a future self, suffering for his mistake. Fortunately those are not acted on, almost by definition, but sometimes larger changes slip through. My entire job as the Sorcerer Supreme is to fix those tears. I explained this very clearly to Banner when he was here."

Steve winced. "After the mission started." And afterward, well, they were kind of busy afterward.

"A mission planned and executed with a mistaken notion of temporal echoes and reverse causality. By meddling with the stones themselves, you changed your pasts and now you will have to change them again, to set things right. Not what you or I consider right, Captain, but what the stones consider right. Come with me. We're going to have to reconsider your mission." She walked to the roof access. "Mind the floors, they've just been waxed."

* * *

Second stop, Morag...

Nebula's description of Morag was pretty accurate, considering it was third-hand. She'd gotten it from her sister Gamora, who'd gotten it from her paramour Quill, who called himself Star-Lord for some odd reason. At least Nebula thought it odd, but she thought most things humans did were odd.

The planet was warm and wet, rocky and abandoned. Some ruins remained, but the only things in them were rodent-sized lizard-like creatures. They and Steve ignored each other. Steve left his helmet up and waited.

He sensed movement in the shadows. According to Rhodey, Quill, aka Star-Lord, came dancing through the ruins and walked right into a punch that knocked him out. Cap could spot the dancing but Rhodey was motionless, until he wasn't. With Quill on the ground, Nebula searched him for the keys to the building where the gem was kept.

Steve followed them into the temple, watching as Nebula burned the flesh off her arm retrieving the orb from some kind of energy field. She handed the orb off to Rhodey as the robotic skeleton of her arm cooled. Rhodey went quantum immediately after, but before she could follow, Nebula cried out in pain.

This must be when her systems synched up with those of her earlier self, alerting Thanos to her presence here.

Steve watched stoically as she screamed, before rushing off to Quill's ship, which was also the ship Clint and Natasha had gone off to Vormir in. It wouldn't help, but Steve had other concerns. The Power stone wasn't one of those distressed by their mission, so the Ancient One had specified that under no circumstances would he interfere with how events played out.

Thanos came, took Nebula, and left. They didn't even scan for the stone, not that Steve expected them to. They had to know by this point that the stone had been taken away.

Once they were gone, Steve went to the power field where the orb had been. He held an orb as identical to the one taken by Rhodey as the Ancient One could make it. It would have been safer, and more convenient for him, to open the orb there on Morag and just take the stone, but they had no way of knowing how long that would take. The original orb was lost in the ruins of the mansion, but Steve had been there while it had been analyzed and opened. He didn't understand much of the analysis, but he remembered what he'd heard and seen, and the Ancient One understood what he remembered far better than he did.

Steve put the orb against the wall of the field and pushed. There was some resistance, but the field bent, as it had under Nebula's hand, before suddenly giving way. Steve had no idea if the armor he wore would protect his hand so he was careful not to let it go past the edge. The orb floated into the middle position and stayed there, just like before.

Steve did a quick scan of the room, and saw the set of keys lying there, fallen from Nebula's hand in her suffering. The doors had closed, so Steve used a Pym particle to make himself small enough to get out, where he put them in the unconscious Quill's pocket. He would wake up, think he slipped, and continue as he had.

Nothing changed. Like Rhodey before him, Steve raised the arm with the time-suit controls and went quantum.

* * *

Fourth stop, New Jersey...

As an earlier version of Captain America left the lab, having 'borrowed' a few Pym particles for his and Stark's return trips home, Steve replaced the tubes with new Pym particles, created by Hank Pym himself, based on his old notes. That done, he went to the basement, to return the...oh, crap.

He pushed the doors of the vault apart easily. Too easily. Tony had used his torch to cut through the bars, but then he'd run into his father and didn't seal it up again. Which was good for Steve but bad for the mission. Steve plugged the tesseract cube into the slot, but how was he supposed to lock the vault? He looked around, but a quick scan didn't reveal any welding gear.

* * *

Fifth stop, New York...

Steve appeared out of quantum space and said, "I need Mjolnir."

She looked up from her work on the Mind stone. The tesseract cube had needed only a little nudging to build itself, but the blue gem had been a part of a larger unit. Fortunately they had all the time in the world. "What on Earth for?" He wasn't supposed to need that until he went to Asgard, some steps away in their plan.

Steve reached out his hand. "Tony had to torch his way into a vault to get the tesseract." He waited for the usual histrionics but she surprised him. "Can your magic weld iron bars thirty years ago?"

That got more of a response, a huff of laughter. "I think you fail to understand what sorcery is meant to be used for."

"I didn't think so." Steve called Mjolnir to him and went quantum before she could stop him.

* * *

Sixth stop, New Jersey...

_Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall wield the power of Thor. _Steve was worthy, and he needed lightning, and the lightning came. It hurt, but he wasn't considered worthy for nothing, touching the hammer to one bar after another.

Many layers of reality away, Thor looked up from his latest tankard of ale. "What?"

* * *

Seventh stop, New York...

Steve emerged from quantum space, to see the Ancient One just about to call out to him. "Emergency handled," he said, hanging Mjolnir from the coat rack.

She sat back, warning unnecessary. "How many of these little jaunts can you make?" she asked.

"As many as I have Pym particles for."

"You just used two making a totally unnecessary trip to get that hammer. How do you plan to get back when we're done?"

"Simple," said Steve. "I brought two extra particles, just in case of something like this. If I hadn't needed them I would have just given them back."

"So someone else can shrink as you do?"

Steve shrugged. "They can anyway, but it's too dangerous. Without the base unit you'd get lost, and we'll destroy the base as soon as I get back. Scott won't ever risk it, ever again. He lost five years of his daughter's life already."

"Seems like a sound motivation," said the Sorcerer Supreme. "Speaking of motivation, it's time for your next journey."

Steve opened the case, kept closed to avoid disturbing her work. He lifted up the containment unit holding a large golden gem. "Won't be a minute."

Next stop, Vormir.

* * *

**A/N 2** Their plan really had no room in it for failure of any kind. They could have put the Power gem back in the orb, put the keys in Quill's pocket, and welded the vault shut, while making the returns after a simple and uneventful mission. Not technically logical flaws, they could have become major problems easily, if someone pushed a starship through and blew up the compound, for example.

These two stones were the easiest and most straightforward to return. Things get a bit more complicated from here.


	3. Soul and Reality

**A/N** Hopefully I can pull off a good scene or two here.

* * *

_"Back so soon?"_

_"I can feel them."_

_"I need Mjolnir."_

_"Won't be a minute."_

* * *

Steve waited at the edge of a pond, watching a man cry.

Clint Barton's dearest friend in all the world had just sacrificed herself for the good of the universe, and he'd rather it had been him. Steve knew how wrong that feeling was, but it would be some time before Barton did. If she was his dearest friend he was hers, and more so. She hadn't sacrificed herself just for the universe, but for him, and his family, which was her family, and she got what she paid for. Immediately after Banner brought everyone back, Barton's phone had started ringing, probably his family wondering where he was and what had happened. They'd been on a picnic when they were dusted.

Steve stared down at the surface of the little pool, reflecting. What must the world have looked like to them when they came back? The picnic table, the farm. Barton had fled, but Nat had taken care of the farm for him, a job that had somehow expanded into taking care of the world. For everyone lost.

For those not lost, for that matter. She had him to help out on that score, not that he could do much for the world. The occasional PSA, but keeping the lights on and the relief flowing was different from healing souls. He remembered running out into the middle of Times Square, after the ice, but he was only one man. He'd tried to put that to good use offering whatever he had to offer to those who remained. Small groups. Multiply that confusion, that awareness of being out of place, by trillions.

Nat had stepped up. She led the Avengers, the Avengers led the rest of the world (mostly), and Earth had reached out even to the rest of the universe as best it could. Captain Marvel, and a talking raccoon. And then Scott Lang showed up.

It could have been undone completely, but Tony refused to allow that, and Steve backed him on that. The pain and suffering of the survivors he'd counseled, the new lives they had built, or in Tony's case created, were just as valid as the lives lost. There would be more suffering as billions came back to a world that had started to shrink for the lack of them, but there would be joy as well. Looking at Barton now, Steve tried to imagine how Lang's daughter must have looked, seeing him on her doorstep.

Balance. A life for a life.

A good trade, but not the best trade. As a soldier Steve preferred to weigh every enemy life he had to take against an untold number of civilians. Hard to do in wartime, where he mostly balanced those lives against the lives of his own men, simply because they were his own men. They fought the same fight, even if they didn't serve the same cause. For some, their lives against a Nazi's was pretty much an even trade, but Steve had their backs just the same. One life for five, ten. The ones who stayed with him over the course of his battles became his brothers, serving the same cause, knowing the real enemy. An enemy with a very distinctive face.

Battling Hydra made it easier, the monsters and the heroes so much easier to see, the battle so much easier, in some ways, to fight. Balance. The Red Skull, product of a flawed version of the same serum that had made Steve, his own equal and opposite in many ways, made his enemy more visible even as he made it more difficult to destroy. Steve had lost track, over time, but he doubted his total would equal the entirety of the Eastern Seaboard of the US. That had seemed a pretty big deal to him at the time.

Nat beat that record all hollow, for sheer numbers, and when it comes to lives, souls of infinite and equal value, numbers are what matter.

And now, here they were, a long way from Buda-Pest. The space stone inside the tesseract had consumed the Skull, sent him someplace else. Here, according to Barton; Cap recognized the description even if no one else did. In the absence of its powerful leader, Hydra had degenerated into a swarm of rats, creeping into power they could not manage to win. Steve wondered what the Red Skull would think of such followers, even if they succeeded where he'd failed.

Not that they had succeeded, in the end, and that told Steve all he needed to know.

He looked around, scanning the rather featureless landscape for his old enemy. No red-faced ghosts had yet appeared, so Steve had begun to doubt one would. But if it did, would it remember him?

Movement drew his eye, and sound, the sound of Clint Barton struggling to his feet and wading out of the pond. For a second Steve wondered where the ship was, had to wonder if Nebula's messages had reached here, but Barton hadn't mentioned them when they all returned the first time. The possibility that the Nebula who'd come back with them was a double wasn't something he was likely to keep to himself. Not after this.

If the ship was shrunk and in his pocket, it didn't matter. Barton kept walking until Cap could no longer see him, and he could no longer see the pond Cap waited next to. After that, whatever happened, happened. As it had. As it must.

Steve moved, coming out into the open. His time suit, a bright white, was already retracted so he wouldn't be the most visible thing for miles. So he got his feet wet stepping into the water, walking out to the spot where Barton had lain. Like Barton, Steve held out a gloved hand, to see the golden gem Nat had bought for them glowing in it. Strange. The other stones were supposed to wreak havoc when held. Rocket had told him about the power stone, and he'd seen what happened to the Skull. Even Thanos had used a gauntlet to shield himself from their effects.

Yet this stone didn't appear to be doing anything. Then Steve looked past his own hand, at his reflection in the water, and saw his scrawny former self, looking past his upside-down hand back at Steve. The kid from Brooklyn.

No way was Steve just going to drop it. He knelt, the action disrupting the image in the water. The stone between his fingers, he lowered it beneath the surface. He couldn't feel any bottom, but the stone's glow was quickly lost, and Steve, like Barton, was forced to let go.

The water turned red. The light changed, still the same twilight but now from all around him, and Steve looked up reflexively. The landscape, the clouds, the sun, the shadows of mountains, had all gone, under a red sky. The horizon was more golden, oddly, the water beneath Steve absorbing the quality of the light where they touched. Steve looked down again. He knelt on the surface of the water, it and him completely still, his hand no longer under the surface. It was still water, though, leaving little wakes when he moved his fingers across the surface.

There were no depths, not even a reflection of height. His own reflection was also not there. Steve rose, standing on the water like a...flooded floor, unhappy with any other imagery. He scanned the horizon, side to side, automatically. He checked his six.

He saw a structure behind him, like but not like many structures he'd seen over the years. Not ruins. Incomplete, it looked like a gate, a structure, with no walls. A memory of an outline. Someone stood within it, a human figure. Steve walked toward it. Them. Her.

He recognized her even from the back, her stance, her hair. She was dressed in white, flowing white, her red hair long and lustrous against it. "Natasha." The water absorbed the sound as it did the light, stripping his word down to the barest bone.

She turned, her gaze upon him tranquil, as he'd never seen it in the office, or in the field. "You did it."

Steve thought she would know, hoped she would, somehow. This was the Soul gem, how could it _not _know about the return of so many souls to the universe? "Yes." It was a bit of a letdown not to be the one to tell her, but a consolation to her it from her lips.

Her unsmiling lips, her peace marred by neither joy nor sorrow. "Now you can begin."

"What?" asked Steve, as darkness surrounded her, but the world threw his question back in his face. A wall of black stone rose where she had stood, and the wind blew his word away. He stood on the surface of the pond, its water frozen into ice as darkness fell, and it started to snow. The shadows were solidifying, harsh cliffs rising above him.

Steve felt no need to rise to that challenge. He knew what was up there already. Like Barton before him, he turned and walked away.

One shadow remained at the top of the cliff, invoked by the presence of the stone that it guarded. It felt the presence of a soul in need. But that soul was walking away from the stone and so the shadow gave it no further thought.

* * *

"Three down, three to go," said Steve, when he appeared back in the Ancient One's kitchen.

"Four down," corrected the Ancient One, "But even so your task is less than half done. By the time you finish returning the Reality stone and that hammer, the Mind gem should be ready for you. Assuming you can return that properly, I will be able to receive the Time stone from you. Only then will your task be complete."

* * *

Steve entered the coordinates for the next stage of his mission, and removed five hundred milliseconds from the destination. He entered quantum space holding firmly to the hammer. The presence of Thor on their journey might have gotten him and Rocket into Asgard, but Steve had no such guide. He did have the hammer, though, and at the moment Steve was aiming for, Thor should be summoning his hammer.

In addition, the enchantment on Mjolnir gave him the power of Thor, and that power enabled him to hold the Reality stone safely. Once he got the stone off his hands he could leave the hammer anywhere and just walk away.

Steve emerged from the quantum realm and fell to the floor, sliding across it as Mjolnir tried to obey its master's summons. Before he went too far that summons stopped, and Steve knew that soon Thor and Rocket would be gone. According to Rocket, he'd found Jane Foster, the woman who was hosting the Reality stone in its liquid form, in a wing not far from here. According to him, she was 'resting'.

Steve found her unconscious on a small item of furniture he didn't know the name of, looking like she'd been dragged there by a dwarf. He took the time to lift her onto the couch-thing and arrange her more comfortably, fix the pillow, and cover her with a blanket Rocket might not have seen and certainly hadn't bothered to spread over her.

He draped her arm so that her hand dipped over the edge and hung toward the floor. Beneath her hand he set the stone, and with Mjolnir he smashed it, backing away hurriedly. The remains of the shattered stone melted, rising up into the air toward Jane's hand. Steve nodded and turned away.

Thor's mother was staring at him. At the hammer. At him again. "And you are?"

Captain America nodded politely. "Steve Rogers, ma'am. Thor's comrade in the Avengers."

Fortunately he didn't have to explain what the Avengers were. "His companions in Midgard," she said. "He described them to us, when he returned with Loki. An archer, a troll, and the like, but only one did he describe as a noble warrior. I assume that was you."

"I don't...um.."

She put her hand on the hammer. "You don't have to. I am Freya."

Steve let her hand push the hammer toward the floor, and he let the handle slip through his fingers until he held it only by the strap. He only had to lean over slightly to set it on the floor.

Freya looked up and down the hall, then leaned in close. "Do you mind if I...?"

"I won't tell," said Steve, equally quietly.

She gripped the handle and tugged, but the hammer stayed on the floor. "Oh, troll dung. I'm his _mother_!"

"A word of advice?" said Steve. She nodded. "If you're trying to lift it to prove you're worthy, you're not worthy."

"But I'm his mother."

"Yes," said Steve. "You are."

From the chamber behind him, Jane Foster made a distressed sound. Suddenly the hammer was aloft, but Steve wasn't holding it.

"You see?" he said.

Freya looked over his shoulder, but Jane was sleeping, distressed in a dream. She hefted the hammer experimentally, then put it down again. "I thought it would be heavier."

"Try catching it sometime." Steve flexed his hand. "Ouch."

"I think not," said Freya. "I expect I have not much longer to live. Hefting the hammer is enough."

Steve looked unhappy. "Are you sick?" _Do Asgardians _get _sick?_

Freya looked calm, as Natasha had. "No, but my son let slip a secret from the future, a future where he missed me, and fears unworthiness, yet he only begins to contest with his friend Volstagg for girth."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be, Steve Rogers. We are both warriors." Then she smiled, "And I have a gift for you, one warrior to another. To replace what you have returned." She help up a hand, and a small block of metal appeared in it. "If that first warrior happens to be a witch, and a mother, so much the better. Thank you for companioning my son." She held out her hand.

Steve took the block. It was surprisingly heavy. "It was, is, my great honor."

"So polite." Suddenly Jane screamed again, and Freya grew serious. "Off with you." She moved around Steve as he stepped away from the door. "Jane, dear, what is it?"

Steve stepped into an alcove, tucking his gift into a pocket of his suit, as Jane yelled, "A rat! A giant furry rat!"

Steve took his smile with him into the quantum realm.

* * *

**A/N 2** I hope my visions of these meetings are worthy of the subject matter. Please tell me what you think of them.

I'm sure there are some who would have wished for some kind of confrontation between Steve and the Red Skull, but the timing was bad. The Skull wouldn't have been there until after the stone was returned, and Steve would have no reason to stay. Thor's little slip of the tongue was small, but said much to a clever woman.


	4. Mind

**A/N** This is the big one, in terms of problems to be fixed. Unlike the other stones, the mission to acquire the Mind stone is full of logical flaws, not simple plot holes.

* * *

_"__You did it.__"_

_"Three to go."_

_"You don't have to."_

_"_Off with you_."_

* * *

"I seem to remember a scepter around it," said Steve, when the Ancient One put a blue glob containing the Mind gem into his hand. It wasn't hard, like a crystal should be. It was supposed to stay soft until he got it back into the scepter, until magic or something. Sort of like he did with Stark, he just accepted it and kept on going.

"I know you do." The Ancient One had seen the scepter in Steve's memories. "Unfortunately the scepter was and will be handled rather more extensively than the orb. Recreating it with the necessary precision would be possible, but would take a great deal of time at this end of history, which I cannot afford to spend.

"Additionally, there is the matter of the manner in which you acquired the scepter. Really, Captain Rogers, what were you thinking? There are military terms describing that sort of operation. I'm sure you know them."

Steve blushed only slightly, his embarrassment tinged by surprise that this woman would know of those terms at all. From the peace of this kitchen, he could see how desperate their planning had been, especially in the light of Banner's not-completely-correct understanding of time travel. Taking the scepter from Hydra agents by claiming to _be_ a Hydra agent? Even with the Mind gem to remove their memories of the entire event, that had always been the riskiest part of the entire operation.

Or so he had thought. Hulk coming out of the stairwell at exactly the wrong moment was worse, since they hadn't even planned for that, but even that snafu could be and had been compensated for, on all sides. Thanos coming into the future, destroying the time gate and losing the scepter in the ruins, was not, and probably could not be. 'Fubar' didn't begin to cover it. "Yes, ma'am."

She nodded. "So your mission this time is threefold. Since you can't return the scepter, or use it to cover your tracks, you must prevent the previous mission from even taking place, accomplish its objectives while leaving the scepter in place, and return the gem."

Steve had to admit, simultaneously stealing and returning the gem under the eyes of Hydra sounded tricky. He couldn't wait to hear her plans for achieving it all.

"Unfortunately I can't tell you how to go about it," she said. "This is exactly the sort of tactical situation where a hands-on officer with a high degree of knowledge, skill, and initiative is needed."

Steve would have sighed, but...no. "Yes, ma'am."

She smirked, and waved a hand, opening a portal. "Off with you. Good luck, Captain."

Steve gave her a sharp look, but she couldn't have known how recently he'd heard someone else say the same thing. He stepped into the portal and it closed behind him.

"I thought he'd never leave," said a voice from the shadows.

* * *

Steve stepped out of the Ancient One's portal into an intersection filled with broken vehicles and other rubble. Time traveling the easy way, one second per second. The Battle of New York didn't really last that long, considering the damage done. He could probably have walked the distance and gotten there on time, but the Ancient One wasn't about to place any of the gems at risk that way.

As expected, the three members of the team were there, waiting for the proper moment to go into action, when the Space stone was neutralized and the beam spiking up from the tower stopped. None of them noticed Steve, for some reason. "Everybody ready?" asked Iron Man.

"Absolutely," said Captain America.

"All set," said Ant Man.

"It's a terrible plan," said Steve.

"It's really not a great plan, though, is it?" asked Ant Man. "Too many, what do you call 'em, variables? Aren't we supposed to keep this stuff, you know, simple?"

The others turned to look at him sourly. "You might have said something earlier," said Captain America.

"I was in awe of your wonderfulness," said Ant Man. "And I just now thought of it."

"Well, better late than never, I suppose," said Iron Man.

"It isn't a great plan, is it?" said Captain America. "Too many moving parts. Two stones, two Hydra teams..."

"And the Hulk," said Iron Man. "I can't believe I forgot him. Remember how pissed he was when I made him take the stairs?"

"No," said Captain America, remembering the report he'd read after the fact. He'd been coordinating search and rescue at the time and missed the show. "Good thing he did, though. Derailed Pierce's attempt to get his hands on the Space stone pretty neatly." Not that they'd known what Pierce had been up to at the time, but they did now.

"Thor grabbed Loki and the stone, and _voom!_" Iron Man slapped his hands together in a gesture of speedy takeoff.

"Are we really going to try to steal the Space stone with the Hulk standing on top of us?" asked Ant Man, not sounding happy at the prospect.

"When you put it like that it seems kind of dumb," said Iron Man. "I'm open to suggestions."

"Camp Lehigh," said Steve, pleased that this was working so well. The mere idea of using the stone to rob the Hydra team of their memories had never sat well with him. The scepter concentrated the stone's influence, making such domination possible, but it narrowed the focus at the same time. He would have to turn the team into mulch before he could adjust their memories one at a time, and he was pretty sure they'd notice that when they woke up, no matter what the stone could do. Offering his own side a simple suggestion and letting them plan their own course was kinder, gentler, and much safer.

"How about Camp Lehigh, where I was first stationed?" said Captain America. "They had a lot of high-value scientific projects there. That's where they put the tesseract when they found it again."

"You want us to go further back in time?" asked Stark, aware of the history. "Suppose we do get our hands on it. How do you propose we get back?"

"Lots of high-value projects," repeated Captain America. "Like Henry Pym's lab."

"Ohhh," said Stark.

"So we go for the Space stone first?" asked Ant Man.

"No," said Iron Man. "Lehigh was an army base and a research station. Cap and I will fit right in. We'll go after the Space stone, while you stay here and get the Mind stone."

"By myself?" No Hulk, but also no backup.

"Sure, piece of cake," said Iron Man. "Just do what I would do, only, you know, different. You were a thief, right?"

"Yeah, a bad one."

"But your heart was in the right place," said Captain America. " Like a klutzy Robin Hood, stealing from the bad guys to bring it to the good guys. And that's what you're doing now."

"Just skip the driving into the pool part this time," said Iron Man. "That's something I would do."

"Gee, thanks for the pep talk, guys," snarked Ant Man.

"Keep it simple," said Captain America.

"Just you and the stone," said Steve.

"Keep it simple." Ant Man nodded. "That's good. I can do simple. Just me and the stone." He looked up at the top of the tower. "Well, if I'm gonna do this alone, I'd better get going. It'll take a while for a flying ant to get up there."

"Let me give you a lift," said Iron Man. Ant Man shrank down and rode on his shoulder. "Be right back."

Captain America stayed and Steve left, heading for the entrance ahead of the Hydra team. They'd be taking the elevator, while he had to run up several hundred flights of stairs, so he needed a bit of a head start.

He came out of the stairs into the penthouse with just moments to spare, a familiar tableau visible through gaps in the interior walls. The whole team stared down at Loki, just before the elevator bell dinged and they stopped posing. Jasper Sitwell and his team of traitors came into the room, not noticing Steve in the corner because with all the bright colors in the middle of the room who would look there? Steve waited for his earlier self to leave the room, hoping he wouldn't have to fight himself again while watching the handoff of the scepter carefully.

He couldn't see Ant Man, which wasn't surprising, but he knew where he was. He could somehow sense the relatively dim spark of Scott Lang's intellect as Ant Man dove into the box containing the scepter, just before the lid came down. He would grab the stone, go quantum, and that would be that.

Time to make his move.

Steve opened and closed the door to the stairwell behind him, before walking out into the open. "Anybody seen my mask?" he asked, his voice pitched to not carry very far.

Not too many people even heard the question, busy with their own affairs. He didn't give them any time to actually think about what he'd said, because that would give them time to think period, and he didn't want that. He walked straight up to the table holding the scepter's case. "'Scuse me, Brock." He grabbed the handle of the box, lifting it up as if to look for his mask underneath.

The box popped open, as he intended it to, and the scepter started to fall, but Steve was ready and caught it by the blade before it could clear the box. He saw the hole where the gem had been and made sure to grab it there, feeling the glob slip into the empty socket and harden in place.

"Sorry," he said, setting the case back on the table. He made sure the scepter was properly secured under the watchful eyes of the Hydra agent, before closing the box again. "Been a long day. Forget the mask." _I'll live without it. _He handed the case to the traitor and slapped him on the back like the buddy he was supposed to be.

Steve walked back to the stairs, going quantum once he was out of sight. _Time to go home._

* * *

**A/N 2** I was thinking of maybe doing something similar to a BTTF-style caper, since Scott Lang was always talking about it, but that sort of half-baked scheming didn't seem like something Captain America would do. He had a mission. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.


	5. Past and Future

**A/N** The wind down as most of us expected. Maybe not as it was expected.

* * *

_"I seem to remember a scepter around it__.__"_

_"It's a terrible plan."_

_"Keep it simple."_

_"Been a long day."_

* * *

Moments before...

The Ancient One turned away from her now-closed portal. "Captain Rogers," she said. "Welcome back."

A much older version of Steve Rogers walked out of the shadows of her kitchen. He moved easily, in spite of his apparent age, which was no clue at all to his real age. Under his arm, held by a hand under the bottom edge, he carried a gunmetal gray bowl. "It's not 'Captain' anymore, of course, not officially. Everyone kept calling me that, though, even after I retired."

"I'm surprised you did," she said. "You don't seem the type."

"Peggy was all for it, said the kids could handle things. Which they could. But bureaucracy was the real villain," said Steve, setting his shield on the table. "The only force in the universe more powerful than the infinity gems. At least they were going by my calendar age, not knowing about the few extra years I snuck into the calendar along the way, but still..."

The Ancient One pointed at the gray metal disk. "Where did you get that?" she asked. "I wouldn't have thought that you could bring anything back with you."

"Just what I brought in with me," said Steve. "The uniform, the suit, and a little block of metal I got from Thor's mother."

The Ancient One wasn't ancient for nothing. "Ah," she said. "You'd disarmed yourself."

"Honorably. So she re-armed me, honorably," finished Steve."One warrior to another. Not enough for a hammer, of course, but enough for a sword, or a shield." He laid a hand on it reverently, lightly stroking the metal. "Doesn't throw worth a damn, though." Steve looked embarrassed. "Sorry. I'm always telling the kids to watch their language."

She ignored his embarrassment, rather than embarrass him a second time. "It looks pristine."

"The original went with me, into the ice. The other me. They never found him, since I was already there, so I had Howard make a new shield for me out of Freya's gift. Uru metal. Boy, did he have a time." Steve chuckled. "Had to invent a whole new level of tech to do it, too. Made himself another bundle off of that, not to mention it finally got his whole 'flying car' thing off the ground." He chuckled at his pun.

She smiled too. "Sounds like you made some changes along the way."

Steve shrugged. "I knew what I knew, at a time when it made a difference. My kids and I jumped the gun on the age of superheroes. Erskine's serum only changed me, but those vita-rays!" He gave another chuckle, then shrugged again. "We kept Hydra out SHIELD, and they kept the peace pretty well. No Cold War, no military-industrial complex. Hydra did so much damage. No moon race, no computers, no cell phones. It was a happier time. People could keep up with the tech."

The Ancient sat and poured tea. "Sounds idyllic."

Steve sighed. "It was. But like all dreams it had to end sometime." He sat and took the cup she offered him. "Thank you. We didn't have many super-villains to speak of, without Hydra, but our other enemy never showed up either. I figured he went into the future and got dusted."

"Probably," said the Ancient One, sipping her tea. "The stones are economical that way. It also would have put an end to your dream life, though."

"Popped me right back here, I guess the second he went forward." His face showed his distaste for the world he'd come back to. "That was in 2014. Don't know how I got to 2012."

The Ancient One considered the evidence. "You took the time stone with you on your last mission, to facilitate the changing of your own past. When you went back to your roots it went with you, holding that reality open, as it were, and it probably would have continued to do so until the moment you began your backward journey to return the stones. You would have appeared as if you'd never left."

Steve gestured at the kitchen, but he didn't mean just the kitchen. "So why am I here?"

"The passage of your enemy from the present of that reality into the future of this one wouldn't have changed your reality, unless he died there, or was disposed of in such a way that his return to his present was impossible."

Steve looked at a memory. "I guess you could call it that. He was so powerful we had to use the stones to do it."

Her eyes widened. "Not Banner again?"

Steve shook his head. "Stark that time. He had armor that could take a four hundred percent overload, probably more, but it couldn't take the stones. It killed him, but he saw his victory first." Steve raised his tea in a toast to his comrade.

If the Ancient One was less than pleased to know anything about the future, it didn't show. "Your enemy's death, accomplished that way, would have closed off his version of the future, his alternate reality. Actions in the present can ripple into the past, as you now know, but this would have been worse. The backwash from your enemy's death would have been much more destructive, a counter-signal of sorts, echoing backwards to its origin point. At which point your entire alternate reality closed down, wife, family, and all. I am sorry."

"Don't be," said Steve, drinking some of his tea. "We shut down our enemy's Hell, and I got a chance to fight for a better future, and win. It was beautiful. Beautiful."

"A garden, of sorts, in its time." _A dream in ours._ She didn't mention that.

"Well, I'm no gardener," said Steve, setting down his tea. He stood, lifting up his shield. "This hung in my garage for too many years. The only time I brought it out was for a parade. That's not what it was meant for, and that's not why I'm here."

Which reminded her..."You're here, 2012 instead of 2014, because you came to the last moment the time stone existed in this reality," she said. "To be honest, I am hoping you'll return it now."

Steve smiled. "That first, and with all due gratitude for the loan." From his pocket he drew a cracked and worn leather glove, part of his old uniform. He put it on his hand and reached into his pocket again, coming out with a green gem. "I'm sorry. I kept it in a box." A box which hadn't come back with him, obviously.

The Ancient One stood. "Excellent." She reached out her hands, levitating the stone off of the glove. The Eye opened as the gem approached, closing as it settled into its familiar resting place. "And so it shall remain, for the remainder of my stewardship. Beyond that I cannot say, but I have faith that Stephen Strange will use the stone wisely."

"For as long as it exists," said Steve, folding the glove. "Our enemy destroyed it in our time, destroyed all the gems. That's why we had to come back into the past."

"Then Stephen will have an opportunity to test a theory of mine." She didn't seem as concerned as he might have expected. "I believe the stones are necessary. When your enemy destroys these, I imagine new stones will come to be, somewhere in the universe. It will be his task to find the time stone and keep it safe, as it has always been." She sat, and drank from her tea. "Why did you say 'first'?"

"Because I'm hoping, now that you've got your gem back, that you'll do me a favor." He laid a hand on his shield. "I can't get back home on my own."

Clearly he wasn't talking about a place. "What year is home to you?"

"2019."

The Ancient One looked sad. "I would if I could, Captain Rogers, the Queen of Asgard is not the only one who understands honorable recompense, but...I'm afraid your time lies beyond my own. I cannot-How do I put this? I cannot see to aim."

Steve pulled his time suit's GPS sensor from his other pocket. "I can aim, but somewhere along the line I ran out of bullets."

The Ancient One took it from him. "How does it work?"

"No idea," said Steve. "We have a base station set up in the future. It sends signals through quantum space so this knows where it is and how to get back. Somewhere along the line I used a Pym particle I shouldn't have, so I can't get back into quantum space."

"I see," she said. "When we close all the doors, technology opens a window."

"Discovers a window," said Steve.

"Same thing, in the end. I will have to investigate, clearly, but equally clearly I can do nothing about it. I'll leave that issue for Stephen to deal with, if he feels the need." She placed the bracelet around the Eye, invoking the stone's powers. A green light speared out, forming a hazy mage in the air.

Steve, knowing where he'd come from, recognized the shapes, Banner especially, but they were fuzzy and unclear. "Can't you bring it into focus?"

"It's beyond my time," she said, as if that was any explanation at all. "Banner's injury troubles me."

"Why?"

"His state when I met him was barely stable, his spirit separated far too easily from his body," she said. "I fear he may try to fix the damage the stones have done to him, and what that might do to his stability."

"I can warn him, but I'm not sure what good it will do."

"Be careful about that, Captain Rogers," said the Ancient One firmly. "You might start the very sequence of events you wish to prevent."

Steve nodded. He'd have to wait and see. "If I can even get there. Is this enough to open a portal?"

"It might be." She raised her other hand, adding to the current spell. A golden circle appeared in the center of the image, but when it spun out to the edges the hazy image had become a cloud. "If I had the space stone I could get you both, but with only your technology for guidance the outcome is more variable."

"Is it safe?"

"Does that matter?"

"I suppose not." Steve lifted up his shield, stepping forward into the portal.

* * *

He walked out onto dirt, cut by a walkway. He looked behind him, but the portal didn't exist on this side. Tony Stark's cabin in the woods stood in front of him, with the lake in the distance. Steve walked around to the side, looking for the entrance to Stark's basement. He put his hand on the pad and was mostly recognized. "Anomalies detected," said Friday.

"Extrapolate for temporal displacement," said Steve, who'd found science and technology easier to deal with when it didn't move so fast. "Current age plus sixty-nine years."

"Adjusting," said Friday. "Biometrics within acceptable limits. Welcome, Captain Rogers." The door to the basement slid open.

"Hello, Friday." Steve descended into Stark's last workshop. "What is the current date and time?" Friday told him, and Steve sagged with relief. The correct date, even if the place was a little off. And he was a bit early, but he had things to do so that didn't matter. "Friday, do you have the current design for my shield?"

"I do." The painting station came to life in preparation.

Steve slid the shield onto the work area. "Paint this please. I need clothing. Scan for new size." All he had was his uniform and it didn't fit right anymore.

"Scanning," said Friday, as the sprayers started their work. "Current sizes out of range. Accessing storage. Closet B."

Steve opened the door to closet B and found a copious supply of Stark's old clothes, suits and shoes, but also more casual wear. Casual was good. He removed the uniform and left it in Friday's care, putting on the new with a bit of relief.

"Shield restoration complete."

Steve turned and went to check the work. The paint job was perfect, the shield looked factory new in spite of its decades of use. "Good job, Friday."

"Thank you, Captain Rogers."

Steve flipped it over. "Do you have any straps?"

* * *

Steve walked along the shore of the lake, listening to the peace and life around him. This was his sort of place, now. He'd have to ask Pepper if she could help him find a place like it.

He heard voices, up ahead, and slowed his pace. Too many different tones, so he hadn't left yet. Steve spotted a bench and went to wait, enjoying the view in the meantime. He set the shield down and listened to the world around him.

"Going quantum in three, two, one...And returning in five, four, three, two, one..."

Birds chirped in the distance.

"Where is he?" asked Sam.

Steve took a deep breath. _Where indeed?_

* * *

**A/N 2** A couple of predictions for future films. It'll be interesting to see if any of them pan out. Adam Warlock should be coming out of his cocoon soon, and he was always associated with the soul gem. Banner could try to fix his injuries and set off the World War Hulk/Planet Hulk arcs. Earth has reached out into space, so a larger stage for future films is likely, with more galactic-level threats. We will see.


End file.
